God gave Moses the power to save the Israelite.
God stopped Abraham from sacrificing Isaac even though it was a test.
God empowered Jesus to perform miracles.
There are many more significant examples...

God destroyed the world, killing hundreds of thousands of people AGAINST THEIR WILL.

Don't preach to me about God not intervening because of this reason or that. He has done it before, he can do it again.

No, it wasn't the will of the children to be shot, but it was the will of the shooter to pull the trigger. And that's all it takes. As for your examples, those all happened at a time when only a small portion of the world knew the truth about God and so God needed to reveal Himself a little bit to gain some exposition. Once word spread about Him across the majority of the world, He could let faith take care of the rest. He still performs miracles, just not ones as theatrical as those you've referenced. It's more subtle, like motivating someone to do a good deed that helps someone in need. I was listening to a pastor the other talk about a woman he knew who was struggling financially and in desperate need of food, and her neighbor who was an atheist gave her groceries. That was a miracle. Just a very subtle one.

"and her neighbor who was an atheist gave her groceries. That was a miracle. Just a very subtle one." How stupid are you? So if the neighbor is an atheist he cannot do a good deed unless its a miracle? He cannot help his fellow human beings unless God forces him to through the medium of a miracle? I am an atheist, and I donate money all the time. Even to religious homeless people. I don't need God to tell me to do that. I want to do it because I want to help people. It is people like you, morally decrepit, who assume we need the hand of God to be good.

God said He would instill His own moral nature into the hearts of all humans, even those who don't believe in Him. The drive to do good is the result of His moral guidance within you even if you don't realize it. Meanwhile the drive to do evil is the result of us turning away from His guidance.

Just a few posts ago you were ranting about free will. Where is the free will if God is driving you. You previously said God does not come into moral affairs as it is a hindrance of free will, now you say he comes into your affairs and guides you towards good. What?

I said He doesn't force us to choose one way or the other. I never said He wasn't an influence. If you feel compelled to behave a certain way, that doesn't mean you absolutely must behave that way. If you're walking down the street and you see an old lady fall, you may feel compelled to help her up. But you don't have to. You have the choice to walk right past her. The instinct to do good is God's hand at work, but He gives you the option of turning away from good.

Okay, fine, I'm done. Usually I would keep this going but right now I have 4 conversations happening on this board at the same time and all I wanted was to be able to relax tonight, eat my leftover hot wings, and watch Doctor Who. I'm done. You win. Good night.

He didn't destroy my refutation because much like God's existence it can't be refuted because it defies human logic. Therefore neither that paradox nor the omnipotence one are valid. They would be if we were talking about a being that existed within our own laws of reality but we're not.

And I wasn't saying that the majority was enough to make it real, I was saying that the majority is enough for me to believe in it, because one thing I know about faith is that you can actually feel the presence of the Holy Spirit when it's in you, and if that many people have felt it then it gives me confidence that the world is not crazy. We may have different views on what God is commanding of us, but there is most certainly a God, and that's reason enough to worship Him.

And of course I'd murder my son. I'd murder my whole family if God told me to. I'm not saying it would be easy but I'd do it nonetheless.

Well I won't make you. But one day judgment will find you. And on that day you will be offered mercy by someone who has all the power and every right to destroy you. And when that happens I pray you make the right choice. I don't want my brothers to suffer. But that's not my decision to make.

I'm telling you dude, it all comes back to free will. God gave us freedom and we are at the mercy of each other now, because He's chosen to give that to us. As Christians we consider that a gift, because free will, in conjunction with Christ's resurrection, is the only way we get into heaven. And that's all that matters.

That's the whole point of our religion. The largest religion in the world. And refusing to believe in it is not going to reverse the deaths of those children. We're simply accepting the fact that the world is completely fucked, the same thing you believe. The only difference is that we get to look forward to the after party.

Yeah, that's the problem. You people are so soaked on the after party that you don't bother with the current. It is a mere transition for you, and the suffering is just a background to be ignored until the music of the after party starts. You may accept the world is completely fucked, but we wont, so go and pray and contribute nothing to the world. Don't expect others to do the same.

We don't ignore the present entirely. The Earth was going to be a paradise but then man corrupted it. Now the only purpose of this life is to guide others on the path to heaven. We love each other and care for each other, as Jesus instructed us to do. But we know this life is nothing more than a blip in time, because something much greater and much more infinite awaits.

" Now the only purpose of this life is to guide others on the path to heaven." This. This is what I'm talking about. Scientific discovery? Learning about the universe? You are exactly like Mother Teresa, and this is an insult. That hag raked in millions of dollars every year but only used it to build more convents. Not a single dollar was spent on modern medicine or teaching her nuns. The place was just a hovel where people even with minor curable illnesses went to die. That mentality, guiding people to heaven, leads to this. This detestable behavior,

I know next to nothing about Mother Theresa. I imagine she's an important figure in Catholicism, but I was raised Baptist and we never learned about her. But it sounds like she was doing a shitty job, if you're information on her is correct. I don't condone that. Jesus denounced the expansion of churches and advocated helping the needy. But He did so in a way that guided people to heaven. So before you bash the mentality, consider the methods apart from the message. There are indeed people who do a poor job of representing the faith, but that doesn't mean the faith itself is bad.

God is the definition of perfection. Good and bad are words invented by man to describe relativity to God. But He is flawless and all powerful, and those two qualities are why we worship Him. I'm done. Good night.

Nothing God does is wrong. He does things some people don't like but that doesn't make Him wrong. There's no authority over Him. You are not an authority. Who are you to second guess the greatest being in all of existence? You think He should operate within the parameters of human morality? Why? Why would you try to humanize Him like that? If you want a being that behaves exactly the way you want then play a video game. But video games won't save you when you die. If you want to avoid hell then you have to put your trust in a being you don't always agree with but which has the power to save you. That's the essence of faith. That's what our ancestors knew and that's why we have to trust them.

The abusive mother is not an ultimate authority, and Hitler was not an ultimate authority. Both were wrong by the standards of God, but God doesn't answer to anyone. He makes His own standards. That being the case, I don't understand how it could be a paradox. And no matter how wrong you say He is, we will still worship Him because doing so is the only way humanity can be saved. And 33 percent of the world is Christian while 85 percent of the world agrees that there is a God. So sit down and shut up, because this planet belongs to the schizophrenics.

We do the bad shit, we're not getting stopped. We could have a comfortable, safe life where we make zero of our own choices, or leave a dangerous life yet be able to choose. I was more referring to the last statement, that wasn't even addressing his arguments, it was just insulting him. Chill out.

If he doesn't interfere with people's will, why does he support or help others reach their goals when they are sick or in a tough situation while others get the short end of the stick and die/fail? This is one of the things I have never been able to understand about religion.

Circumstance and free will are not the same thing. God may provide you with a certain set of circumstances, but how you choose to respond to them is entirely on you. He's not forcing you to act a certain way.

Those kids who got shot weren't really presented with any way of getting out of the way or to avoid the situation. Also, it's already been explained that if there is a god then there is no free will and thus god chose the specific set of events that led to those kids being shot.

I think that if God presents someone with a way to fix a problem (I hear people thanking God for people/information daily), that is God providing a person circumstance. From my point of view it seems like good things are God's doing whereas bad things are man's fault.

If you can't thank God for doing evil then why should we be thanking him for doing good? If he simply provides the resources and it is a human that acts with them, we should be responding to the human for the results and not God.

Okay, fine, I'm done. Usually I would keep this going but right now I have 4 conversations happening on this board at the same time and all I wanted was to be able to relax tonight, eat my leftover hot wings, and watch Doctor Who. I'm done. You win. Good night.

Why would you thank God for something good? He didn't do it, he deserves no credit. He does not mettle in peoples lives according to you, therefore he does not deserve thanks.

And if you are going to say "You thank him because he is your creator". That is a bad argument. No one asked to be created, some people even wish they hadn't. He just did it and expects everyone's love...that is plain and simply wrong.

"Speaking to God now..."
God, if you are up there, strike me down now. For you are not glorious, powerful or righteous. You are the equivalent of a child who throws temper tantrums when he doesn't get his way. You are the equivalent of a sadistic child burning ants with a magnifying glass. You are nothing and undeserving of anyone's love. Rot in hell.

But understand that in Creation He provided us with the resources that we use to do good. Science has developed technology and medicine to help people and save lives because God put the necessary ingredients in the world, and the necessary intelligence in our brains.

And it doesn't matter what we wish He would have done. The past isn't going to change. Where you came from is set in stone and all you can do now is choose where you're going.

I am sorry, I don't mean to judge, but it is when we get into stuff like this that I truly think religious people have a sort of chemical imbalance in their head that blocks all logic and rational thinking.

Yeah they do. Again, there is no conceivable existence of God outside of a heavily biased book. There is widespread belief in religions that do not pertain to the christian God by the majority of the world.
A rational thinking individual would look at those two facts and would conclude that the Christian God does not exist.

There is no evidence supporting the idea that God doesn't exist. That would be impossible. And just because the majority of the world is non-Christian does not mean that the majority of the world denies that there is a God. The fact is, only about 15 percent of the world is atheist, meaning roughly 85 percent of the world agrees that there is a God. And of that 84 percent, the majority is Christian, encompassing a whopping one-third of the planet.

The odds that you are worshiping the wrong God are pretty high then.
You also have history of religions, how they began and how the end. The tale is almost always the same. How can so many people believe in something that is clearly fabricated? The answer relies mostly in what religion surrounds itself. Death and the afterlife.

That doesn't exactly come out well on your end. I mean, a supernatural pretense could never be explained by science because there is no evidence for its existence.
Christianity follows the same staples that other religions do. Someone creates a story, overtime gathers a following and people worship. It isn't hard to do. That in itself is evidence along with everything else that piles up into a huge mess that points its fingers at a huge lie, The Bible. Sure it has a good message, nice poetry, beautiful stories, but nothing more.

So god presented them a situation in which no possible way of escape was possible? Nice god.

God and free will cannot co-exist because of essentially the "butterfly effect" (Awesome movie, but besides the point, any small action such as the flap of a butterfly's wings, can affect future events.), because any intervention by god in the slightest bit, creates a sequence of events built off of that intervention. Therefor, a god who is omniscient would know every possible line of events that can occur through slight changes in the actions he takes, and is therefor "choosing" a specific one to play out. Any small action can do this, and as a result people believe god created the universe, which is a rather large intervention.

So unless you say god did nothing, not even create the universe, do we have free will, otherwise we are simply playing out a line of events chosen by said god from the very beginning.

I said God may provide circumstance, but bad circumstances can be avoided if humans cooperate. If the shooter had made the decision not to kill them then obviously it wouldn't have happened. But he did. God did not make him do that.

God created the universe, created the world, created man and gave man free will. At several points in history He removed the ability of certain individuals to to deny His existence, and that is why we believe in Him today. But as long as you are able to choose which sock to put on first each day, you have free will. (I'm just using socks as an example, in case that wasn't clear.)

So natural disasters like tsunami's mentioned by kanade or tornados, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc. those can be avoided by humans working together? That will solve this bad circumstance THEY got themselves into? Please don't make me laugh.

Did you even read what I said? Your decisions are based off of previous events and reactions to them, if god specifically chose a sequence of events, then whatever sock you chose is already predetermined and chosen by god.

Predetermined, not chosen. God knows what you will choose but doesn't make you choose a certain path. Even if He knocked down the first domino, when it comes to the socks, you still have two of them. And in that moment, no one and nothing is making you choose which one to put on first.

But a different set of events before would render your current choice moot, even the reasoning going for your choice for the sock is based on pre-rendered events god CHOSE since he is omnipotent he CHOSE them and see's the specific line of dominoes this one will cause to fall.

Many different factors, left and right preference, variations in the socks due to previous events, etc. The point is, you may seem to have free will but such a god would have seen the events that would transpire from intervening in any way. It would affect where you personally were born, which religion you would believe, your familial status, wealth status, which language you'd speak, whether or not you'd win the genetic lottery and not be retarded, and yes even which sock you would choose.

See I disagree. I can't conceive of how past events would take away from your ability to choose. Where you were born depends on where your parents choose to be at the time of your birth, which religion you follow depends on your choice of whichever ones you know about at a given time, which in turn depends on circumstances influenced by the free will of other humans. Just because God knows what will happen doesn't mean He's controlling you.

Imagine you're an athlete in some sporting event, and your parents are in the stands videotaping you as you play. Later after the game you watch the tape, and even though you know what's going to happen, the version of you on the tape doesn't know until he makes a decision. That version of you has free will even though the tape has already predetermined it.

Just because you don't understand causation with choices and decisions with even personal matters, does not make what I said wrong.

"Where you were born depends on where your parents choose to be at the time of your birth"
And past events didn't affect that?

" which religion you follow depends on your choice of whichever ones you know about at a given time"

I can say with 100% accuracy that if you lived in india and were raised there, you would be hindu. So we can atleast come to a conclusion that obviously choice of religion isn't because of some divine revelation of the truth, just what you grow up around.

"Just because God knows what will happen doesn't mean He's controlling you. "
I didn't say he was controlling you, I said he picked a specific set of events to play out. You would perceive it as free will but those past events he set in motion would be the deciding factor for your future decisions.

Your analogy makes no sense, why would something you are viewing in the future have any impact on your decisions at the time of the recording?

The only reason some people believe in him today is because a 4 thousand years ago, some people scribbled some stories down.
And then 2000 years after that, some people called the disciples who followed a man called Jesus, who had access to the Old Testament decided to add to the story.